Mech/power armor study. Trying two things here: Messing with using a Photoshop brush where pen pressure controls both size and opacity, and exploring the grey area between anime and DARPA. It probably came down a little closer to the former than the latter, but I suppose I can always address the deficiency with some tan paint and a gritty voiceover:

"War. War has changed, except that war never changes, which was a change. War. We were entering a new age that was yet timeless, because it was second hand and smelled funny. Because in the darkness of the dark, there is only… darkness."

(Cut to a prerendered animation of something grey and brown with a depth of field effect and lots of bloom. Hero with good hair and a hint of mascara looks grim and is too cool to look at the camera.)

Anime vs. DARPA? That's the first time I've heard the style of military ads referred to as an art style (if that is what you are referring too). I say you add the tan paint and gritty voiceover, ha ha...

I've heard of DARPA- they were founded in the panic following Sputnik to make sure the US would not be technologically surprised by a potential enemy nation again. They do a lot of serious military technology projects- and they occasionally fund crazy shit like nuclear hand grenades and levitating telepathic ninjas.

Last I heard DARPA was hosting the 100YSS and awarded a grant to continue the vision to an organization founded by astronaut Mae Jemison. They are right here. As much as I like research that thinks seriously about ways to send spacecraft over interstellar distances, this seemed an odd allocation of funds for a defense organization. Then again, seeing as DARPA was founded as a response to Sputnik, maybe it makes total sense to them to fund research into the farthest-out topics in astonautics...

DARPA is like the fairy godmother of cold war capitalism. While in concrete terms I was thinking of their work with exoskeletons in the 1960, there is also a mythic dimension to their work, from the beginnings of the Internet to a certain place in paranoid pop culture. I suppose the visual cues I'm chasing are the way you can mundane elements to evoke the fantastic.

DARPA was founded to ensure the US is not surprised by the military applications of science-fiction technology, or rather, technology that sounds like science-fiction until it blazes a trail of fire across the sky like Sputnik. In made-up worlds DARPA makes a good interface between the practical considerations of real soldiers and whatever fantastical elements your introduce for just this reason.